


Goodnight, travel well

by Cards_Slash



Series: Second Verse [11]
Category: Wynonna Earp - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, M/M, Semi-Descriptive Torture, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Of course, the trouble with a trap like this one was that it had been created to draw a person in.  There were no defenses to keep someone out.  There was no indication that the owner of this fine home had any thought he would ever need a defense.  That was the sign of a stupid man.  Doc had hunted enough of them in his day to know that no matter how great and terrible the beast thought itself to be, there was always something greater and more terrible.
Relationships: Doc Holliday/Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane
Series: Second Verse [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632727
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Goodnight, travel well

Lou’s hands were like old leather, the tips of his fingers worn out and soft. His touch was always soft, always skating just across the surface of your skin. Like the tenderness of his smile, that touch had been perfectly crafted to put a man at ease. 

He’d been a philosopher once, fresh from hell, with his soft hands cupped around Bobo’s face and his thumb like a sweet kiss brushing over his cheek telling him how desperate men were for kindness. How quickly you could put hope back in their eyes with just a gentle touch. People _wanted_ hope, Lou had told him, they wanted it so _bad_ they couldn’t help themselves from finding it where it didn’t exist.

“I’m sure you tried,” Lou was saying. His voice was leaning over Bobo, almost coming from somewhere over his head regardless of how they were standing. His words moved with the motion of his fingers, drawing the lines across Bobo’s face like a man making fine art. Lou wasn’t _rushing_ ; he was _savoring_. “Some men are meant for greatness and some,” he smiled. His fingers pushed against the underside of Bobo’s chin to make him look up. “Well, you know what sort of man you are. You know where your worth lies.”

Lou’s hand folded along the back of his neck as he pressed the rim of the cup against Bobo’s lips. He didn’t say a single word as his mouth parted like mimicking a man taking a drink. But he was so _pleased_ and so _proud_ as he lifted the cup away. 

That smile was bright in his eyes, like he meant it when he said, “I _have_ missed you.”

\--

Doc didn’t have one fucking cigarillo in his pocket. He didn’t even have a cigarette. Just for the sake of the smoke filling his lungs he would have settled for a cigar. He would have taken a wad of chewing tobacco. 

Dowdy had stopped at the edge of the woods, like it was as far as he could go. The man hadn’t _stopped_ moving since yesterday morning but he was still _now_. Sitting in the driver’s seat of his tiny flat car, he had simply come to a point where he couldn’t even be bothered to breath. He was staring at those trees like there was something lurking in there worse than the hell they’d just lived through. 

“Bullets,” Doc said.

“Yeah.” When Dowdy did move, it wasn’t with any of his usual speed. He got out of the car like a lazy bloom unfurling in the sunshine. He was fiddling with his keys from the driver’s door to the trunk, turning them over from one hand to the other. When he _finally_ came to a stop at the end, he was grim-faced and clenching his jaw. He said, “Lou can be real convincing. He gets in your head, he makes you think whatever he wants you to think.”

Well, there was one very simple way to deal with a man with a slippery tongue like that. “I do not plan on allowing the man to _talk_ ,” he said. 

“Nobody knows what happened with him and Bobo,” Dowdy said, like he couldn’t keep it in. “Lou’s about the only thing that scares Bobo. I--” He just didn’t know how he wanted to end that sentence.

He must not have been able to work out what he meant to say at all because he gave up. The trunk opened with a whimpering squeal and he ducked down to throw a blanket off the variety of junk filling it up. He had a box of bullets, a length of rope and an ugly plaid scarf when he finished digging through it. 

“Bobo’d be pissed if we let you go out there without provisions.” He offered all three. “I’ve got knives too. I don’t know what’s your preference.”

Well, it was good to have _choices_.

\--

The pain lasted long after he surfaced into some kind of consciousness. Whatever Lou had done to render him _unconscious_ felt wet and thick at the back of his skull. There was a knot of something he couldn’t quite _describe_ filling up in the inside of his head, pushing back against every movement he tried to make. He could _feel_ his hands and he couldn’t move them; he couldn’t even fully wrap what little space he had to think around the _idea_ of moving them.

It was only his curled knuckles resting along something hard, and cool and almost damp. He couldn’t press down against it to make sense of the feeling, to tell if it was rock or concrete. He couldn’t open his eyes to see if the darkness was caught behind his eyelids or if his whole body had been swallowed by it.

He could hear, almost, like the sound was echoing down a tunnel that stretched and stretched farther than any man could see. He thought something sounded like a breeze and something sounded like an empty space. No matter how hard he listened, no matter how desperately he tried to _hear_ , he couldn’t make out any sound that could be identified. 

(He couldn’t hear the shuffle of footsteps. He couldn’t hear the wetness of an animal’s breath. He couldn’t tell the sound of a hungry growl from the faintest noise of wind rushing along rock.)

His chest _was_ moving; his breath was ragged and shallow. He could taste it on his tongue but he couldn’t move his mouth. 

He couldn’t even breathe _faster_. He couldn’t force his body to match the rapidness of his thoughts. Even his heartbeat was sluggish in his chest. He was trying to calm a body that wasn’t even _afraid_ and the madness of it kept his every thought from fully forming into words.

It was as rapid as the gunfire had been, tearing through his skull without mercy. 

Something like, 

_the bear, the wolf, Lou, teeth, blood, oh-God-please-don’t,_

And right at the end, just before the cycle started again, just when it felt like he could get his hands around something that felt _whole_ , it was only:

_Henry_.

\--

A very, very long time ago on the other side of a well so deep and dark that it had felt as if he’d simply ceased to exist there had been quiet just like this. There had been a chill in the air that felt exactly the same. 

It hadn’t been _these_ woods; but it had been trees that looked the same. It had been snow that felt the same. It had been at the start of a manhunt that wasn’t going to end anyway but bloody. Only Doc hadn’t been by himself, just inside the tree line, gathering up what passed for strength when you couldn’t remember the last time you slept.

No, Wyatt had been there. Wyatt who never saw the purpose in bringing two tents. Wyatt who couldn’t help himself but wiggling under your blankets in the dark. Wyatt with his needy hands and his anxious mouth, always looking for something he wasn’t willing to admit to. 

Doc could remember how brilliant the world had been when Wyatt was sure that he loved him. How his smile was like a little ball of sunshine, and every kind word he said was better than the finest opium a man could buy. But Wyatt looked at him the way Wynonna did, like he could simply take out the bits that didn’t fit. Like he’d made his peace by clinging to ignorance, and he just wasn’t ever going to open his eyes to the ugly facts he didn’t like.

No matter how much you tried to love a man that couldn’t bear to look at you with both eyes, it never quite felt like you could catch your breath.

Doc would have bet his life on love feeling like Wyatt’s smile landing on him in quiet spaces. It was a goddamn surprise to him, standing out here right _now_ , finally-finally- _finally_ figuring out how wrong he’d been.

He opened his eyes and he drew in a breath and it filled his whole body with something like cold fire. He was thinking, how stupid it was to be so fucking angry because he’d been set on having a conversation about the time and place for confessions and how he had a few _thoughts_ about Robert Svane, a bit of thread and a man without face asking for things that Doc wasn’t willing to part with. He had a few _thoughts_ about how Bobo had given up when he should have goddamn kept fighting. 

He had _things_ he wanted to say and he was going to get to say them before the day was over. 

But first, there was a man to find and a selection of knives and bullets to put to use.

\--

It was too dark to see even with his eyes open. Bobo could feel the rock around him the way he could feel metal. His hands could make out the shape of it beneath him and above him. It could follow the slope up toward the surface before it got lost in the loose dirt at the mouth of the cave. He couldn’t _see_ how the walls narrowed around him and he couldn’t _see_ how the top of the cave dipped sharply toward the corner, how it formed a pocket of space at the end. 

He could _feel_ it. 

His body could move now, but it was weak. The effort of digging his elbows into the rock to move himself an inch at the time left the whole of his body exhausted. For every inch he managed, it took five minutes to build up the strength to move another. 

All he could do for those five minutes was lay still and breath and wait. He was sorting through his memories, trying to remember if he’d ever figured out how he’d survived this the first time around. (He hadn’t survived. He had been devoured like a meal, eaten bit-by-bit until enough of him was missing he found something that qualified as death. But he woke up again, just the same, with all new flesh that tasted as delicious the second time as it had the first.)

Creeping into the narrow space at the end of the cave wouldn’t save him from the skinwalker. She didn’t give up because she _couldn’t_. Either she’d get tired of trying to shove her massive body into a too-small space and change into something _else_ , or he’d get tired of waiting. 

The dread was almost worse. It built around you; it invaded your body. It filled you up with the certainty that you weren’t going to survive. It started playing tricks on you, whispering how much _better_ it would be if only it were _over_. 

Bobo didn’t have to last _long_ ; just long enough to give Wynonna a headstart on figuring out how she planned on killing Lou. She had every advantage she needed. She had more weapons and allies than anyone would need to take out Lou even in his home turf. Bobo could buy her the only advantage that mattered now: being safe from the goddamn skinwalker.

He dug his elbows into the rock and moved his body. His boots scraped where his legs dragged. The sound was almost enough to bury the shuffle of motion at the mouth of the cave. It nearly covered the huff of heavy breath, that sound of deep-indrawn-breaths. 

Bobo could live forever and he’d still remember the sound of the bear sniffing the air for his scent. He couldn’t even see it. He couldn’t feel it in the dark. He turned his head toward the sliver of space he hadn’t gotten to yet. 

“Fuck,” he said (or tried to).

\--

The house was not hard to find. Even if Dowdy hadn’t been so informative, it was hard to miss a home as out of place as the mansion at the end of the long lane of streetlamps. What a sight it must have been in the dark, drawing in every lost traveller in these lonely woods. Why, in the dead of winter it must have been as close to heaven as any lost and confused person could imagine.

What luck, finding a place like this.

Of course, the trouble with a trap like this one was that it had been created to draw a person in. There were no defenses to keep someone out. There was no indication that the owner of this fine home had any thought he would ever need a defense. That was the sign of a stupid man. Doc had hunted enough of them in his day to know that no matter how great and terrible the beast thought itself to be, there was always something greater and more terrible.

The house was warm on the inside and the lights glowed so golden and pretty. 

The room he walked into was filled up with young women in white dresses. They moved like a single thought spread out among so many bodies, every one of them without any sort of independence drawing inward to a single point. At the head of the room, being slowly enveloped by a sea of pretty faces, was the very man he had come to find. 

“It’s rude to walk into a man’s house without knocking,” Lou said.

Perhaps Doc had left all his manners in the passenger side of Dowdy’s car. Or maybe they’d walked out of the center of a barricade because they didn’t have the _sense_ to know that there were men that were willing to die to protect them. Whatever the case, wherever his manners were, they were _not_ present at the moment. 

Doc pulled a gun and every single one of those confused young ladies lined up like a shield around their smiling master. They must have felt like he was something worth dying for, and that put him in an awkward position because he was not a fan of things like civilian casualties. 

The girl at the front couldn’t have been older than Waverly. She had soft blue eyes and dark brown hair and freckles across her nose. Her hands were half lifted in surrender as she lifted her chin like she was _terribly_ brave. Some people thought it was important to be brave when you were about to die.

“I do not make it my business to shoot anyone that has not done me wrong, but unfortunately you have caught me at a bad time and I will,” he cocked the gun to give her time to _think_ , “shoot every. Single. One. of you that stands between me and that piece of shit you are protecting.”

The girl had tears in her eyes but she didn’t move.

Now, the trouble with making a threat was that it was _worthless_ if you were not willing to see it through. So many bad men got caught up in spouting bullshit they couldn’t follow through on. Doc pulled the trigger because history had made him a _good_ man, and a good man kept his word.

Of course, he only grazed her shoulder and she wasn’t going to _die_ but what a fantastic mess it made when her blood splattered across those fine white dresses of the women behind her. What a sobering sight to see your friends be thrown to the ground; to hear her scream in shock and pain.

He pulled back the hammer on the gun and the click went through the crowd like a single shiver passing all along their shoulders. “Now,” he said very softly, “I have brought enough bullets for _everyone_.”

They didn’t have to move, because they couldn’t help how they turned to look at their master. They couldn’t _help_ but look for strength from the man that had promised it to them. Every one of them turned their heads and their shoulders followed through. They opened up a long, narrow slice of space just big enough for a whisper to sneak through.

A whisper and a bullet.

\--

Bobo had never been buried, even when he’d come back from hell, it had been where his body _died_ not where they’d laid it to rest. All the things he’d survived and he’d never once found himself in a space so small, held so completely still, buried an unseeable depth into the earth.

The stone wasn’t heavy against him but the weight of it was _immense_ nonetheless. He’d slotted his body along the length of the opening, slid as far as he could before it went too thin to wedge his body in any tighter. His feet were turned out on both sides, his arm was shoved so tightly into a slice of space that the bone was grating against the rock. 

There was only enough space to expand his chest in half breaths but enough in front of his face that it filled up like a hot fog. He could hear every sound he made like a stereo playing at high volume. That thump-thump-thump of his heart, the panic in his rapid gasps for air.

He couldn’t close his eyes no matter how hard he tried; he couldn’t bear to think that maybe he wouldn’t see it coming. Maybe if he kept watching, he’d see how a shadow shifted. He’d catch a shaft of light at the right moment. He’d be able to _prepare_.

It wasn’t the first stupid idea he’d ever had; it was surely not going to be the last.

All he needed to do was remember it didn’t matter how bad it got because he’d live through it. He’d lived through it before. He’d live through it now. Sooner or later the bear would get tired of eating him, or Lou would lose interest in fun of having his very own living-screaming Prometheus. He’d remember how much he preferred the symphony of _mortal_ terror.

Lou liked to drink his blood-red wine at the side, smiling to himself like he was hearing some beautiful song. He’d line up his sacrifices, draw on their faces one by one, smiling as he went. He liked it best when they loved him first, it gave him a filthy fucking thrill. 

Bobo never asked, and Lou never mentioned, but there was always the idea that Lou had fucked them before he brought them down to the room where he was going to watch them die. Like he had to _possess_ every single part of them from their flesh to their souls.

The bear snarled in the dark. She hadn’t had half the choice that Bobo had about being here. Underneath all the fur and the hunger that was driving her, there was just a girl who believed the wrong man. 

He did close his eyes then; he drew a breath in through his nose. He thought of _home_ , how it used to be. Back when the world was endless and there were no boundaries. He thought of long, slow evenings with nothing to worry over. He thought of the old dog that had lived at the edge of his property, of how it always came after dinner, sneaking up through the grass.

A man couldn’t help but love a dog. Robert couldn’t help himself from loving that stupid dog with the skinny ribs, that always came after dinner begging for something to eat. He fed it from his fingers, and they sat out on the porch for a while, and it felt almost like _something_.

Yes, Bobo thought of that old dog that never stopped coming back. He didn’t think about how it must have moved on after he died. How it found someone else to feed it (because that was better, to think it moved on than to wonder if it died waiting for him).

\--

The women in white dresses had scattered like a flock of birds when Lou’s brains spit out the back of his skull. Flight was the best choice for them in this particular case, it would have been a damn shame if they’d settled on attempting to put up a fight. 

Now, the only real trouble he had with shooting Lou in the head was that Doc was not familiar with his regeneration habits. There was no telling how long it might take the man to fully come back from this momentary death. 

However, it gave him _ample_ time to prepare.

The rope that Dowdy had given him wasn’t as thick as what he was used to, but it wound tight and it tied securely. When he wrapped it around his arm and started pulling Lou’s corpse, it held the weight without a whine of effort. 

Doc took a tour of the house, through a maze of rooms that led him to what passed for a church when you didn’t have a soul to speak of. It was lit up like the front room, cast all in golds and warm wood. It made you feel _safe_ ; it gave you the idea of _holiness_. Set in the front, looking different than any altar he’d ever seen, was a big brass tub waiting to be filled. 

And just his luck, drilled into the ceiling a big round hook that looked exactly like the sort of thing that could hold a man tied up by his ankles. Doc had never quite believed in God the way a man who lived by his faith might have, but he was certain enough he believed as much as the man who built this room.

It took some doing, a matter of moving a chair and standing on the rim of the tub on his toes, but he managed to wind the rope through the hook. Of course, if a man was willing to have a hook installed that meant he understood that once you had a man _hanging_ , you would then need to have some manner of holding him there. Doc found the anchor drilled into the wall by the door. There was one on either side, masquerading as a bit of metal meant to hold the curtains back.

“Why Lou,” he said as he started _pulling_ the rope to hoist the man’s miserable corpse up, “I believe in another life we might have been _friends_.” 

The church room had everything a man needed save for a bottle of liquor and something to drink. That was alright, some things were best done sober. Doc was of the mind that if you were going to do the sort of things he had planned, you ought to do them when you were at your sharpest.

A drunk man did not get his point across as well as a sober one.

Doc shrugged his coat off and threw it over a pew. He unwound the scarf that Dowdy had _insisted_ he take and dropped it to the side. He pulled the knives he’d taken from Dowdy’s trunk out of his pockets and held them one in each hand, working out where he wanted to start.

Lou started groaning to himself before Doc worked it out. His noises didn’t have the quality of a conscious man, they were the sounds you made just-waking-up. There was no point in trying to frighten a man that wasn’t fully aware of his surroundings. 

“What?” Lou groaned. His arms jerked from where they’d been hanging over his head. His knuckles rapped against the edges of the tub and it sang like a bell. His whole body twisted as his thighs clenched and he tried to bend his knees. The rope did whine then, like a snap, as Lou swung in the air. 

It had to be mighty confusing, to have no memory of how you’d gone from king on high to hanging upside down. That was how it worked; you never saw these things coming before they were done.

Lou’s eyes weren’t fully focused on him, but his mouth was working. His flailing hands slapped on the edges of his big brass tub like he could lift himself up high enough to get free from the rope. “Holliday?” he said.

“No.” He did not mean that he could not be addressed by his name. He simply meant that he could not be addressed by this man. Doc had cut out a man’s tongue before but he hadn’t been conscious when the deed was started. He’d also not been hanging upright, but finesse was not required in situations like this. What mattered was Lou’s slippery golden tongue was parted from his mouth.

The thin, skinny knife Dowdy had suggested cut through muscle like a knife through hot butter. And Lou’s ugly brown blood ran down his face like a river, filling up his nose and spilling over. It ran into his hair and fell like fat raindrops into the tub.

Doc’s hand was covered in his blood, he smeared it down his face as he crouched at the edge of the tub. Lou was wide-eyed and staring at him _now_. “I am only going to ask you one time so I do advise you to think very carefully about how you choose to answer my question. You will find that I do not possess the sort of patience that allows a man to construct this _elaborate_ fantasy you have built for yourself. Where,” and he put spaces between these words so they really carried the weight they required to _work_ , “is Robert?”

Lou’s mouth was all blood and groans that couldn’t be made into words. He tried shaping them with his lips, but there was something about the look in his eyes that seemed to suggest he found the question _funny_.

Men always thought they were bigger than they were at the start. Doc patted Lou on the face. “You see,” he stood up with no hurry, curling the edge of the blade under the buttons on Lou’s white shirt as he went. They popped one by one until the shirt was hanging off his arms, getting caught in the blood forming a puddle in the bottom of the tub. “ _You_ are presently hanging between me and the man with whom I need to have a conversation. This does not put you in a very comfortable position.” 

He turned the blade when he ran out of buttons, when it was just Lou’s pasty white skin and all those fragile organs beneath it. With normal men, you could only cut so deep. He’d always had to remind himself that moderation was required. 

Lou was not a _normal_ man. He wasn’t even a _smart_ man, swinging his arms out to grab at Doc’s body like he was. His hands caught him by the pants pocket and the buckle of his belt buckle. He had some idea of getting a hand on one of Doc’s guns. All it took to destroy his well-thought plans was taking a step back.

“Well,” he dropped the thin knife back on the pew and pulled his _preferred_ knife out it’s sheathe on his holster. “If you cannot keep your hands to yourself.”

\--

They found themselves at equal disadvantages. Bobo couldn’t _move_ and that meant he had no _escape_. That meant the best he could do was concentrate hard enough on not recoiling from the tearing pain of the bear’s claws scraping down the side of his body. He didn’t have the _room_ to pull his legs, to move his arm, to roll his head back when he screamed or push it to his chin as he grit his teeth.

The only thing he _could_ do was lay there and feel it happen. Know it was coming again, and again, and _again_.

Because the bear couldn’t reach him all save for the very tip of her claws. She couldn’t edge her face into the space far enough to get her mouth on him. If she tried, if she really pushed her body into it, she could lap at the taste of his blood along the rock. Her spit ran into his arm and made the wounds burn, but she couldn’t get her mouth on him like she wanted.

He screamed and she bellowed.

And then, sometimes, they were just still. 

Bobo was catching his breath again, convincing himself it was only sweat soaking his skin. She laid at his side with her arm stretched out and her whole body shuddering with aggravated defeat. 

“I don’t like it either,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone,” as if she’d waste one second saying a word to any of them if she ever got free, “this wasn’t my best idea. Felt like it,” he squeezed his eyes shut like it would stop them burning. “Felt like a good idea. I can’t kill Lou. Lou needs to die. Wynonna has to live.”

The bear snarled at him. Her arm flailed, the claws raked down his arm across the furrows she’d already left. The paw she had pressed against the rock over his head was beating against it. It wasn’t unreasonable from her side; all she had to do was eat him and she could _move on_. She could be free of impulses she had no control over. 

She wouldn’t be burdened by needs she didn’t understand. 

“Wyatt always took his fucking time too,” Bobo said. He tried to wipe his face but both his fists hit the rock at the same time. The bear snarled again, and he _laughed_ because he couldn’t help it. “I mean,” he said to a bear that didn’t give a single fuck about him, “he never even came _back_ to Purgatory. Is it too much to ask for one fucking Earp to do the right thing?”

The bear shoved herself away. All her anger was a bellow of sound. She ran at the slope of the cave and then back at him and screamed her anger like a cloud of hot air filling up what little space he had. 

Yeah, it was starting to feel like that for him too.

\--

Lou’s screams had started to change in quality. While they had been wordless, guttural shrieking at the start, they were being shaped into something that sounded almost like an attempt to communicate. Almost as if a man with only part of a tongue was screaming, _please God stop I’ll tell you anything._

“It has just come to my attention,” he said as he wiped the tip of the blade along the last bit of clean fabric left on Lou’s pants, “that I have not properly introduced myself. I have been operating on the assumption that you _must_ ,” he crouched as he spoke so they were looking at one another like proper gentlemen, “know who I am.”

Lou’s whole face was red as a tomato. All the blood he’d hadn’t lost through his skin was settling in his skull. Through an unfortunate series of mistakes, Doc too had found himself suspended by the ankles and that amount of blood in your skull made for the most _unpleasant_ headache. (He’d even heard it said that if you hung a man upside down long enough he’d drown but he’d never _seen_ it happen.) Lou nodded as his eyes went looking around for the knife in Doc’s hand. 

“Am I also correct to assume that you were made aware of my present relationship?”

Lou’s eyes couldn’t get any bigger, but his mouth twisted into a mask of agony. This was a man that had come face to face with a very serious regret. His nod was much slower, like he was ashamed to admit he’d had.

“Then you must be one of those sorts of gentleman that believe a man has suddenly become _less_ of a man when he indulges certain preferences. I have dealt with _many_ men like you in my day.” 

There was precious Lou, the monster that had kept them all from sleeping for days, shaking his head so vigorously it was a wonder it didn’t pop right off the end of his neck. His mouth was forming around the idea of the words _no, no I’m not_.

“What I have _always_ wondered,” and Doc had never once wondered, but that was his own secret, “was what a penis must look like when you cut it down the center. I think we should find out.”

Oh, and Lou really started screaming then. He’d abandoned his flailing when he’d lost his hands because blood loss was a bitch but he’d rediscovered some of his endless vigor. All those words he’d been trying to make seemed to become a single word, shouted again and again and again. 

“Cave! Cave! Cave!”

“I recall, I did tell you that I was only going to ask once. You had your chance to answer.”

Lou must have excelled at _presentation_ because his operation could not have run on the strength of his wits. He was clenching his bleeding belly, trying to follow Doc to standing, saying a lot of words that mostly sounded like, “you’re wasting your time with me, Bobo’s getting eaten by a be--”

Now that was not a very intelligent thing to say to a man that was already short on patience and in desperate need of a cigarillo. Doc had not even intended to drive the knife into Lou’s quivering gut but he wasn’t disappointed by the choice either. He dragged it _down_ as he sank back into a crouch. It didn’t slide easy because it wasn’t the sort of knife you used for things like this. It got stuck on his breast bone, and Doc left it there so he could wrap both his fists in Lou’s filthy hair. “I _better_ find him in one piece,” he hissed at the man.

Lou couldn’t answer because he was screaming. 

The noise of it ate up all the sound around them, so Doc didn’t even hear Wynonna and Dolls until he saw them. Dolls was horrified but _impressed_ (and that was a conversation that needed to be had) but Wynonna was kitten-faced and just plain horrified. 

Lou wasn’t going to stop screaming on his own, and Doc had no need for his face anymore. At this close range even his caliber of bullet did a decent job at removing a portion of a man's skull. 

“Do not worry,” Doc said, “he made sure to tell me where he put Bobo.”

There were tears in Wynonna’s eyes, “Doc.”

He didn’t have time to let her work through whatever she’d packed into the sound of his name. He cleaned his blade on Lou’s clothes and slid it back into the sheathe. When he was done, he looked at her with as much sympathy as he could manage (at the moment). “Wynonna, I believe it is long past time that you accept that neither myself nor Bobo are the men that you thought we were.” He went around her to grab his coat, “do not shoot this piece of shit until I get back.”

Dolls was a half-step behind him, going, “wait, wait. I’ll go with you. Howard said he took Bobo to feed the bear. The bear is a skinwalker, we can’t shoot her unless we have to.”

Doc didn’t care what Dolls wanted to do just as long as he didn’t get in the _way_.

\--

There was no time in the dark. Every minute could have been an hour. It could have been six hours since the last time he opened his eyes. The wounds running down his arm and digging into his thigh couldn’t heal with the bear coming back to rip into them in her desperation to drag him out.

Time had to be passing but there was no mark to know how fast or how long it had been.

Bobo had no way of knowing how long he’d laid in the cave before the bear had come. Or how long it had taken Lou to get him _here_. 

All the same, he knew that time was out. Whatever he’d been waiting for, and he couldn’t remember now what the hell that might even have been, it wasn’t going to come. It was only him and the bear screaming at one another.

“You never told me if you could understand me,” Bobo said, “if you can, I’d appreciate it if you could crush my spine first. Really makes it easier to deal with being eaten, you know? You probably don’t.”

“Close your eyes!” 

Bobo didn’t even have time to hear the words before there was a brilliant red tumble of light rolling down the slope. As dark as it had been, any light at all would have hurt, but that smoky bright red seared against the surface of his eyes like fire. The bear liked it even less than he did, her legs were pounding on the ground as she roared her outrage until it filled the whole of the cave and made the walls _shake_.

Bobo couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Henry?” because it _had_ sounded like him.

“Bear!” was Dolls. It was undeniably _Dolls_ shouting from the mouth of the cave. “Hey, bear! I heard you were hungry!”

The bear didn’t hesitate when it had prey that was stupid enough to offer itself up. Bobo could almost make out the shape of it in the red smoke, gearing itself up into a proper run as it climbed out of the cave. 

He didn’t waste a second making sure it was going to stay gone. Half his body was bleeding and the other half was numb from being wedged so tightly into the rock. All his fumbling was barely getting him anywhere, and he couldn’t quite calm the needless motion of his limbs enough to coordinate a proper attempt to get out.

“You son of a bitch,” _was_ Henry. He slid into the cave half on his ass and half on his feet. There was a flat bit in the middle where he landed and rocked forward onto his knees without pausing. “You _stupid_ bastard,” was as _angry_ as he’d ever heard the man. But he dropped onto his belly with one of his arms reaching into the narrow space to wrap around the mess of meat that used to be Bobo’s arm. 

Henry pulled him out with three tugs, taking the time to reset how he was resting on his knees after every pull. And once he had Bobo out far enough to get his hands on him properly, his palms were everywhere. They were pushing against his face and his chest and gripping at his arms. It didn’t even seem like Henry could believe that he was there. His breath was wet and ragged and his wandering, slapping hands finally pressed against Bobo’s face and _stayed_ there. 

There was barely enough light to see by, just enough to catch the terrible wetness in Henry’s eyes. Bobo’s hands weren’t as reliable, but he pressed his palms against the man’s chest just to make sure he was _real_. 

Henry’s forehead pushed against his like he couldn’t keep himself upright a single minute longer. 

“What are you doing here?” Bobo asked. Maybe he meant, how did you get here? How did you know where to look? Maybe he meant, who did you come with. Maybe he meant, why did you _bother_.

Maybe he meant, _didn’t you hear me_?

Maybe he meant it just like he said it. 

Henry didn’t move back from pressing their foreheads together; he didn’t drop his hands from where they were clutching Bobo’s face. His eyes opened just enough to look at him, his voice was a raw wound, whispering, “I love you. You don’t leave the people you love.”

\--

Dolls was back at Lou’s illustrious mansion before them. It could most likely be contributed to the fact that while the man was mortal and _exhausted_ , he had complete use of his legs. They’d made a snare to catch the bear without killing it and all Dolls had to do was run fast enough to keep from being killed.

Bobo’s whole left side was mostly strips of meat and that had slowed down their progress. Every few steps they’d managed, they’d taken another few minutes to rest. Whatever hellish energy had brought him to this point, the very last of Doc’s stamina was fading under the growing realization that they might have just won this. 

The longer he spent with his arm around Bobo’s back, the longer that familiar heat soaked into his aching body, the easier it was to really believe this was as close to a victory as anything could be considered. It mattered, of course it did, that Bobo was shocked and winter-white. It mattered that they were leaving a trail of blood from oozing wounds.

It mattered that they were dragging themselves back to the fine home of an honest to God monster. But what mattered _more_ was that they were wounded, bleeding, exhausted and dragging their barely animated corpses _together_. 

Wynonna wasn’t crying anymore. She was sitting at the end of the second pew, leaning into the corner with Peacemaker resting in her lap and the look of a woman in desperate need of a drink or a prayer. Dolls was right next to her with his head tipped back and his hand pushing into the still oozing wound on his shoulder. 

Bobo dropped into the first pew they passed. His arm was all limp and stringy, pulling his whole body to the left with the weight of it. He didn’t look up at the strung up corpse with anything like horror. No, he was caught up in a sort of exhaustion that had no name and something so profound it made his bones hurt. 

“I left you in that well,” Bobo said so quietly it almost wasn’t meant to be heard.

Yes, he had. That was no small thing but all the same, there was a simple truth that Bobo was overlooking. “I never would have given up the ring,” he said, “Not even to save you from hell. So all things considered, I’d say we’re even.”

“Can I shoot him now?” Wynonna asked, “I need a shower. I need to sleep.”

Doc looked at Bobo. There was a value in witnessing the death of the monster that haunted you that could not be underestimated. It would have been just as efficient, maybe more so, to let Wynonna shoot the bastard as soon as she walked in. But none of them had been _wronged_ by him the way Bobo had and therefore none of them had as much say in his fate.

Wynonna came to the center aisle, dragging her feet the whole way. She looked like a very tall child, waiting to be sent to bed. But she was looking at Bobo and _waiting_. 

Bobo’s answer was a motion of his hand, a sort of _proceed_ roll to his wrist. 

Wynonna nodded just before she raised Peacemaker to end the whole damn thing once and for all.

\--

Bobo hadn’t fallen asleep in any traditional meaning of the word. Even revenants had a level of blood loss that couldn’t be overcome by sheer will alone. It wasn’t the same as dying, but wasn’t exactly sleeping either. The last thing he remembered was Henry and Dolls working together to get him _into_ the truck.

The next thing was jerking awake in the backseat, feeling around for that unforgiving stone, and finding glass and leather and Henry groaning in objection to the elbow that hit him in the chest. He was blinking like his eyes were glued shut, “it’s a car,” he mumbled.

It was a car, it was _Dolls’_ ugly black SUV parked in front of the bar. 

“If you’re awake,” Henry said with more confidence, “Howard said he fixed our room.”

“Howard?” Bobo was _hearing_ every word that was being said to him. He understood what they meant, but he couldn’t wrap his head around why they were being said. He was still half-caught in a cave trying to understand Henry's arms pulling him into a hug that made his whole body hurt. “Right,” he said (mostly to himself). 

His fingers were working on both sides again, so he pushed the door open as he caught Henry by the wrist and pulled him along. He didn’t need to pull him, because Henry was already moving as soon as the door opened. 

What a pair they were, covered in blood and wearing rags as clothes, stumbling up to a closed bar. He didn’t even have to open the door because Dowdy was there with a nervous sort of smile on his face.

Howard was at the bar, drinking what looked like fruit punch out of a glass. Whatever was in the bright red abomination must have been strong because his face was rosy and round-cheeked, smiling as broadly as he’d ever seen the man smile. Whiskey Jim was sitting at his side with a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a begrudging grin.

Even Hui nodded at him with what passed for a smile.

“Welcome back,” David shouted from the corner. Lawrence raised a glass without saying a word.

There must have been something that they were waiting for Bobo to say. It seemed like the sort of time where he would have declared their unquestionable victory. He hadn’t even seen how the battle at the barricade ended, but if they were all here now with no missing limbs, that must have meant they won. 

Bobo was still working out how words meant (since everyone was using them, and half of them didn’t make sense). Henry didn’t seem to see the sense in stopping, he’d nodded back at all the smiles and kept pushing them forward toward the stairs. Bobo was being gently shoved onto the first step before anyone had a chance to do more than follow their every move with those soft-and-confusing smiles. 

But Dowdy said, “we all knew you could do it. We all knew.”

“Thank you for that,” Henry said, “and good night gentlemen.”


End file.
